Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess

The original Playstation had a lot of innovative games if you dug deep enough and Techmo’s Deception was among the top of my favorites just for being so different and fun. I didn’t play Deception IV: Blood Ties for PS3 (As for a lot of PS3 games) But now that Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess is out for PS4 I get to play a more complete version!

I cannot state first hand if the game looks better or performs better then its PS3/Vita counterparts but it doesn’t have all the DLC plus a new playable character and a few new traps. That’s pretty much it but if you are new to it then its fine.

The story is… nottttt important. It does have a story but its been modified from the old originals. Pretty much the plot of all these games is to have people come to your castle to kill them to get enough power to resurrect The Devil. This one is more or less the same but you now play as the daughters of the devil. That’s pretty much all there is to it. I feel for something so simple they still put a lot of dialog in the game even if it is all text. I actually like it its kind of funny to see all the girls bicker back and forth and the writing is not terrible.

Let’s get to the games best part. The gameplay. This is what attracts me to the series so much. People come to your castle. Your castle consists of many rooms. The rooms have their own built in traps you can trigger and a square grid layout. You place your traps on the grid and have to try to plan out how you will take your enemies. Here you have all the time in the world as you stop time to set up your traps. You will have to get use to how and what the traps do and utilize them in combos. You can combo into the stage traps and try to style. At first it will seem simple but the enemies will get trickier and have stats that you will have to adjust your planning around such as armor where you will need traps that have armor breaker. Or enemies might be immune to floor traps so you won’t be able to use them in your combos. Plus, they get tougher and faster. They also have the other mode with the other character where you will have to do things a little differently.

Unfortunately, that’s all there is to this game. After you beat it you might be wondering why you don’t have many Trophies. That’s because this game is to be played more then once. It might take the whole story mode before you are better at the game, then you can go back and beat challenges for the past chapter’s.

I really like this series. I think they could go bigger and harder with it if only they had the fan base but I also don’t mind where its at right now. I couldn’t recommend it for a retail price for people new to the series as it might not have much appeal unless you think anything I said sounds interesting but if you even played one of these I feel it’s a decent follow up. Its classic yet updated.